General Question

Forgotten book title?

Does anyone know the title or author of a book which was written by a Western i.e. Caucasian chap who with his family in China set up and ran a small lodge in one of the provinces? He left China and wrote a book about his time there and I’d like to read it but can no longer remember enough to track it down…

3 Answers

Is it CHINA CUCKOO by Mark Kitto (Constable & Robinson)? I remember he opens a lodge where he serves mainly tea and bacon sandwiches which are loved by the Chinese.

A former Welsh Guardsman, Mark moved to China, became a ‘mini media mogul’, fell foul of the Communist Party and ends up moving his family half-way up a mountain in Moganshan. Mark’s story has been described as a kind of rural Chinese version of Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence.

@WMFlight – That’s it!! Thanks so much – it was driving me nuts, the feeling that I knew it but was just beyond the fuzzy edges of my memory! :)

@zenvelo – Thanks for the suggestion too even though it wasn’t the one I was looking for – I did look up the book on Amazon and the real character Grace Aylward who inspired the story and it looked really interesting, so I might read that as well :)